JVC vs. Mercury Grand Marquis

I recent bought a 1985 Mercury Grand Maquis, and want to install my stereo from my old car. I have a JVC KD-S10. I have the wiriring harness for it, but I am unsure of what colors goto which cables in order to install it, and I'd rather not dish out 35 bucks to have it installed by someone. If anyone can help, please do. I am dying without having music in my car.

Re: JVC vs. Mercury Grand Marquis

An 85 Grand Marquis might be a pain to install even with the wiring harness. Many 80s Ford vehicles use common-ground speaker wiring. Many have factory amplifiers. Some even have a common ground wiring setup going into the factory amp.

Remove the factory radio and match up the plugs with the wiring harness you have. Make sure it's the right harness. If it is, make sure all the speaker wires in your wire harness will have a matching factory wire on the other side of the plug. If your plug fits, and all the speaker wire locations have a factory wire on the other side (doesn't have to be the same color) then just match up your wire harness colors to the wires coming out of your deck and plug it in. It should work fine.

What you'll probably find is that you have 8 speaker wires from your head unit running to 5 wires in the factory plug. If this happens, go back to the trunk and look up behind the back seat on the passenger side. You will probably see a football-shaped box with two plugs full of wires attached to it. This is the factory amplifier. One of the plugs is the output plug; this has all the speaker wires in it. You'll have to locate the speaker wires, then extend them up to your head unit.